


Now Where Did That Come From?

by Kira_Dattei



Series: The Old Guard Whumptober 2020 [31]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Developing Friendships, Established Relationship, Immortal Husbands Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, M/M, No Whump, Post-Canon, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:07:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27789466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kira_Dattei/pseuds/Kira_Dattei
Summary: Nile talks to Joe about pain.Prompt: Ignoring an Injury
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Nile Freeman & Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani
Series: The Old Guard Whumptober 2020 [31]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1994617
Comments: 4
Kudos: 92





	Now Where Did That Come From?

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not a whump writer so I can't promise a huge amount of whump in all of these. I just picked the prompt from each day that actually sparked an idea and ran with it.  
> I'm mostly using these as a way to get a feel for the characters and I simply love the relationships given in canon and wanted to explore them.  
> Joe is the lucky whumpee for most of these because I just love him.
> 
> These are all going to be one-shots and they are as connected as you want them to be so you’re good to just read one and not worry about missing anything.

Nile groaned as her bone reset itself and the skin stitched back together until it was all as it had been before and she glared up at Joe, who just grinned back at her and offered her a helping hand back to her feet. As irritated as she was for him having broken her leg so completely in the first place, she still accepted the hand.

“You’re still telegraphing too much when you go for kicks,” he advised. “You formed a bad habit at some point where you’re turning your hips away when getting ready to kick. It tells me exactly what you’re going to do and also slows down the kick itself because now your hips need to recover the distance you turned.” He was turning his hips in demonstration as he spoke and while she didn’t remember doing that, she did know that if it was habit she wouldn’t necessarily know about it until it was brought to her attention.

It had only been about ten days since the whole Merrick debacle and it had been getting more and more obvious that Joe was getting antsy about being in the same place without doing much of anything. So Nile had done Andy and Nicky a favor and asked Joe to start training with her on hand-to-hand combat. Sure, she’d gone through the basics but she had a long way to go and she figured it was better to start with one of the immortals who hadn’t broken a thousand years old and had already been subjected to Andy’s very unsympathetic methods of getting her point across so they were more likely to be easier to learn from.

That’s what Nile had thought, anyway.

But then they’d gotten started and she realized very quickly that Joe’s teaching style was heavily rooted in learning from mistakes rather than giving a warning of what to avoid.

Which, in hindsight, she figured she should have guessed that based on how reactionary of a person Joe was. He’d already shown that he was one more prone to rush in, make mistakes, and then figure out what happened so that he didn’t make the same mistake twice. Though she did wonder if it had been a trait he'd allowed to run free because him making a mistake that got him killed wasn't a permanent consequence. She wondered if he would approach things differently if he was mortal.

“You’re a tyrant,” Nile accused and Joe laughed.

“I’m a fantastic balance of too much instruction followed immediately by too little.” Nile really had to work to keep up her irritation as she wanted to laugh now. “Andy makes for an interesting teacher because she tries to explain something but she internalized so much of her fighting that she doesn’t actually know how to put what she does into words that make sense until you do it right. When Nicky and I met her and she stared training us, we were lucky to have a readily available translator with Quynh.”

Joe’s expression became distant and sad, like it always did when Quynh came up. But he didn’t seem like he was shutting down to the topic of their missing immortal.

“You learned from her?” Nile asked.

“Yes, though Nicky and I had been immortal for some time when we finally met them so we were a bit more experienced than you are. It helped that we were born in a time before firearms and so did not start with the disadvantage of being brought up in lazy methods of battle.”

Joe didn’t need to say Booker’s name for Nile to know that’s what he was talking about.

It also touched on something Nile had learned very quickly about these new people in her life: all three Andy, Nicky, and Joe held no respect for guns. They used them out of necessity, were more than proficient with any kind of gun that they came across, but still had their preferred type of firearm. They simply didn’t like them.

Joe had told her the other day that guns made killing too easy. He’d said that while he would give firearms their due attention as weapons, he would never respect them.

“They make it too easy to dismiss responsibility for the harm caused to others. And while you can pick up a sword and cut or stab someone, there is no question that what you did was your fault. That isn’t the case with guns. The careless can not know the safety was off, not know that a round was chambered, not know what type of ammunition was loaded. All of those take from the responsibility of the harm they caused when they fired.”

Nile had initially thought she disagreed, especially considering how much she was still struggling with how much death she had become responsible for in a very short amount of time. But then she recalled that Joe had actually been alive to witness when the primary weapon of wars became guns. He had actually known a different kind of warfare and Nile figured she’d give herself a chance to see what she learned before really seeing if she leaned one way or another on the matter.

She’d argue with him about it for now because Joe was a blast to argue with and he obviously enjoyed the challenge of having someone new to counter. And he was definitely someone who liked to learn and she had already caught him looking up things she’d told him about that he hadn’t been familiar with.

Either way, Nicky had already told her that he would be working on shooting with her. He was the best shot out of all of them so it made sense. She’d ask him some of his deeper thoughts on the subject once they started.

That brought Nile’s attention back to the present as she became curious. “So, what kind of teacher is Nicky?”

Joe laughed. “He would have stopped you before resorting to breaking your leg to get the point across. But I ask you this, _habibti_ : would you be as motivated to fix the habit if I had stopped you?”

Nile rolled her eyes exaggeratedly as she held in any show of amusement. Better not to encourage Joe with that.

Though he had called her “ _habibti_ ” a few times now and she wondered what it meant. She hadn’t heard him call Andy or Nicky that and he didn’t do it often enough for her to remember to ask without changing whatever subject they were on. If she had to guess from his tone, it was affectionate, which wouldn’t be surprising since Joe was easily the most verbally and physically affectionate of all of them.

Nile had noticed how Joe kept a closer proximity to the others. He moved comfortably through what Nile considered Andy and Nicky’s personal space but they both seemed just as comfortable with it. And while Nile had expected what she’d seen of how Nicky would usually reach out for Joe whenever he came near, she was surprised that Andy was just as likely to rest her hand on Joe’s arm or shoulder when he was near. It was all comfortable and obviously automatic for them and it was one of the best things Nile had seen of these people since meeting them, that simple show of them understanding each other. Because that contact they shared with Joe was a comfort to him and Nile had seen the absent but fond smile Joe would give every time.

Nile looked forward to being that comfortable with him, for something so simple to just happen automatically just because she knew it comforted Joe.

Dismissing the train of thought and focusing back on Joe in front of her, she absently rotated her ankle around, feeling the lack of pain in her leg and she thought over how much it had hurt in the time that it had been broken and as it healed.

“So, you’re pretty old, right?” she asked, relieved that she knew that she could be so blunt with all of them.

“If you think over nine hundred years is ‘pretty old’ then yes,” he replied, obviously amused.

“It really never stops hurting?” she found herself asking, reminded of the conversation she’d had with Booker in that cave of a safe house.

Joe instantly became more serious, the speed at which he could shift moods something she was still getting used to.

“No, it never does. And I’m grateful for that.”

She looked up to him, frowning in her confusion.

“We have already delayed the consequence of death by a matter of lifetimes. We have lost the most natural consequence there is and we have no answers as to why. Of all the countless people that have existed, why the seven of us that there have been? What makes us worthy of this gift and curse?”

“You think it’s both?”

Joe shrugged. “Nicky goes back and forth on that more than I. Mostly I have just come to appreciate the time that we are given. This life gave me Nicky and a family I would not have known otherwise. There is value in that, enough to balance the life of battle we have chosen to lead.”

Nile hummed thoughtfully, appreciating that Joe was able to see all that. She was sure he had his days because there was no way they didn’t all struggle with this no matter how long they’d been around, as Andy proved. And Booker had proved that as well even if he was younger than the rest of them.

She wondered if Joe's particular opinions came more from him being raised a Muslim even if he’d stated he doesn’t really follow the traditions anymore and hadn’t for a long time. Or maybe it was his artistic nature helping to see things just a bit differently than the rest of them.

“And being grateful for never stopping to feel pain?” she reminded him of his initial response to her question.

She’d already figured out that Joe was an interesting blend of deep introspection and being easily distractible. That she was almost completely certain could be blamed on his artistic nature.

“I think it isn’t enough that we know one day we will simply not heal and this power we have will be gone. We still suffer just like anyone else and that allows us to hold onto parts of our humanity that could otherwise be lost. It reminds me that there is still plenty we have in common with everyone else who isn’t like us.”

She gave him a dubious look. “You do realize that the only thing you don’t have in common with almost all the rest of the world is that you don’t die, right?”

Joe gave her a sad smile and it might have been the first time she really believed he was as old as he was with just how old his expression was. And considering that Joe usually had just a youthful feel to him because of his more expressive nature, that was a huge difference. “I try to believe that as often as possible. There are times where it’s more difficult than others. And it’s been a while since I last got caught up in that so I’m probably due.”

Nile was noticing that they all claimed to have some sort of cycle with their thoughts about this whole immortality thing and she did think that was pretty interesting that hundreds and thousands of years alive didn’t mean they got so attached to a certain mindset that it never changed.

Joe’s demeanor shifted and he didn’t seem so sad anymore, now looking determined. “You will get used to certain pains to some extent. It just happens without you really realizing it until one day you’ll notice something doesn’t affect you as much. But then the way you get an injury will suddenly make you not want to feel it ever again. For me, many ways I’ve been hurt that didn’t kill me stay with me longer.”

Nile crossed her arms. “Sounds like some unhealthy coping mechanism.”

Joe gave her the frown that she was starting to recognize as her saying something he wasn’t familiar with.

“Wait, you don’t know what ‘coping mechanisms’ are? I swear, I’m sending you all to therapy.”

Joe slid his hands into his pockets and relaxed his weight to seem more casual. “No, thank you. That sounds like more trouble than it’s worth.” Nile went to shut that down but Joe hurried to continue. “Not likely for the reasons you think. It’s just that the longer we talk to someone who isn’t one of us, the more they realize something is off about us. We honestly just don’t keep up enough with pointless things like modern ways of speaking. And someone whose whole job is to dissect what you say makes me nervous. I’d rather just go to school. It has been a while and I’ll admit the bullshit Freud wrote that was accepted made me lose all interest in psychology for a long time. But I have heard that he’s been mostly disproven by now.”

Because of course they just went to school, Nile thought with a roll of the eyes. Joe and Nicky especially seemed to be academic types. Not that she would complain about that. She could definitely work with that, helping these guys join this decade by learning about the latest advances in how to not be complete messes. She felt like it had been a long time since that could be said about any of them.

“I’m putting a pin in that for now but we will be talking about that later.” Joe gave her a nod and a grin. “So, how much can you ignore after nine hundred years?”

Joe scratched at his beard and she thought she saw him blush a little but it was hard to tell. “Nicky is better at ignoring pain than me and he has a little higher tolerance to pain. He always has. But as long as it is something that will pass quickly, I can usually put it aside. I also manage better when there is someone around I don’t want to have the satisfaction of seeing me show weakness.”

Nile rolled her eyes again and playfully smacked his arm even as she filed that little fact about Joe away as something to watch out for, reading between the lines of Joe being the kind of person to hide that he wasn't completely okay to the people he cared about so he didn't make them worry. “Don’t be such a guy! I’m going to go talk to Andy about this.”

Joe laughed. “Andy is worse than me about it. Or have you forgotten that she neglected to tell us that she lost her immortality? That wasn’t just some new development to her personality but how she’s been for a long time. We’ll need to watch her carefully for not changing that just because she doesn’t heal quickly.”

“Imagine that. One of you being stubborn about something.”

“I know about the pot and the kettle. Do you?”

Nile laughed and shoved at him again, Joe humoring her and stumbling back a step.

“Are you ready to get back to work now? That feels like enough procrastination for me.”

Nile gave a dramatic groan as she stepped back a little. “I guess. But if you break my leg again, I’m done with you.”

“Then don’t telegraph your kicks. Or are your legs the only bones I’m not allowed to break? Because I can avoid the kick I see coming a mile away and move in to break something else.”

“Asshole,” she noted and he gave her an excited nod.

“I’ve had practice. Now, if you don’t want Andy to decide we aren’t working enough and that she should take over for me, we might want to get moving.”

That was enough to convince Nile that Joe was who she preferred to work with, at least today. And she felt like she had learned some things about Joe that gave her a better understanding of who he was and she was already looking forward to learning more. Just like she looked forward to learning about any of them.

Though she wasn’t looking forward to how many more bones he would break before they were done for the day. She’d eventually be on the same skill level as him but for now she was resigned to being on the receiving end of the hits for the foreseeable future.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading and I hope you liked it. Feel free to drop a kudo or a comment if you liked it. They are all so very much appreciated!


End file.
